A PREGNANT solicitor who was murdered by her husband at a Scots beauty used her legal skills to help convict him from beyond the grave, a new TV documentary has revealed.
Fawziyah Javed and her unborn child died after she was attacked by Kashif Anwar at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh.
The trial of the 31-year-old’s husband heard that, as she lay critically injured at the foot of the cliff, she told a passer-by: “Don’t let my husband near me, he pushed me.”
Alex Prentice KC, the lead prosecutor in the case, said evidence collated by the victim in the months leading up to the murder was crucial to securing a conviction in the case.
Fawziyah had secretly recorded phone calls of Anwar threatening her and went to the police twice so that there was a record of his abusive behaviour, although she didn’t want them to intervene at that point.
The second police report was made just days before Anwar killed the employment lawyer from Leeds on a weekend away to Edinburgh in September 2021.
A two-part Channel 4 documentary called The Push was granted access to film the trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Anwar, 29, was found guilty of the murder and ordered to serve at least 20 years behind bars.
Mr Prentice told the filmmakers: “Fawziyah collected a great deal of evidence which formed the pillar of the prosecution case.
“The evidence of what Fawziyah said was crucial. It was effectively Fawziyah speaking to the jury.
“I have prosecuted many murder cases over the course of my career but for a variety of reasons this case is extraordinary.”
Asked if Anwar would have been found guilty without Fawziyah’s evidence, he said: “It would have been very difficult.”
A friend and legal colleague of Fawziyah called Ingrid added: “She built this massive mountain of evidence culminating with giving a statement to the police on the verge of her dying.
“The fact she was a lawyer with all the legal training, I do think she must have thought about leaving this evidence behind.
“I remember feeling like she died like a lawyer.”
The documentary follows Fawziyah’s family as they go through the emotional turmoil of the trial.
After the jury retires to consider its verdict, her mother Yasmin Javed tells how she fears Anwar will be acquitted and go on to kill again.
THE heartbroken mum of Fawziyah said her brute husband murdered her daughter for being “too British”.
Speaking after the verdict, Yasmin said: “He didn’t like the fact that Fawzi had her own voice, her own opinions.”
She told BBC Newsnight: “She had contacted divorce lawyers to get the ball rolling to get a divorce because he always said, ‘I’m never going to divorce you’.
“And she’d also made voice recordings of him where he’s being threatening and abusive towards her.
“So obviously that was all evidence of how he was treating her.”
The couple, from Leeds, got hitched in an Islamic ceremony on Christmas Day, 2020.
Three months later Anwar, an optical assistant, knocked Fawziyah unconscious in a cemetery, the court case into her death was told.
Further abuse revealed in the court case involved Anwar holding a pillow over her face and punching her in the head.
It also emerged that Anwar had pocketed £12,000 from his unsuspecting wife’s bank account while she was sleeping.
Yasmin told how she said she had urged her daughter to flee the brute but she said Fawziyah was biding her time and said she knew what she was doing.
She said: “He has got to be punished. He can’t do this to another family, I can’t have another family going through this.”
The programme shows Anwar with his head bowed as the jury’s verdict is returned and he is sentenced by judge Lord Beckett.
It also airs a 999 call where he told an operator his wife had slipped on Arthur’s Seat and that he tried to save her.
He said: “Fawziyah’s just on the edge of the cliff, man.
“We both just slipped, I tried grabbing her arm and she fell.
“We both technically slipped and then I tried grabbing her arm and she went sideways.”
The Push will air on Channel 4 on March 3 and 4 at 9pm.
